Abstract/Summary

This chapter is intended to restore awareness of the importance and scale of the periodicals market in wartime Britain, and to indicate the range of subjects covered, the trends over time in the movement of titles, and to trace the evidence that the periodicals market offers for how and what the British population read during wartime. It gives an overview of the ebb and flow of magazine publishing in Britain during the First World War, looking at the periodicals that catered for leisure interests as well as for information and instruction. The publication and reading of periodicals is a culturally-inflected practice, so it is inevitable that while many aspects of the British experience will be shared by other countries, it should be remembered that this discussion only applies to British periodicals during the First World War. By looking at one market in depth, this chapter offers the fine detail of a discrete period in British reading history. Since wartime conditions made this period of periodicals publishing history particularly volatile, the statistical evidence presented here shows how the war affected how people read, and the extent to which the market changed